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Archive for April, 2013

The Learning Factor, Asia Pacific’s leader in executive training, today announced the launch of its new division, Bare Brilliance. They guarantee this will disrupt executive education by breaking the boundaries of classroom training.

Many companies don’t have the time to send people off-site for days of training; nor do they have the budget to pay for airfares, accommodation and expensive training rooms. Training today needs to be short, sharp and succinct. The average Bare Brilliance session is only 90 minutes long.

Bare Brilliance improves the performance of businesses by deploying a global, next generation training solution. It delivers 40 of the world’s leading training courses right into the office and home. There are no physical classrooms but instead virtual classrooms. Bare Brilliance combines chunks of training content that is delivered with a live facilitator over the web.

“We have incorporated global research on how people learn best into each of our Bare Brilliance programs,” says Vicki Kossoff, Director and Co-Founder of The Learning Factor.

“Before smartphones, people went online roughly five times a day, in long chunks, but today with smartphones it’s 27 times per day, in much shorter bursts. Armed with this research on how today’s professionals learn best, our instructional designers have developed 40 programs to drive participation for busy, distracted 21st century learners.”

In a Bare Brilliance training session, participants have a live, online facilitator. They interact by joining in polling, exercises, whiteboard, live discussion and review of key points using annotation tools such as the pointer or highlighter. Participants can also type their questions in the chat or embedded Q&A panels and receive immediate feedback from the facilitator or subject matter expert.

Bare Brilliance offers:

The ability to attend live programs from the comfort of your office or home

Interactive sessions including videos, chat, and multimedia tools which makes the training fun and engaging

Programs that are available as public virtual courses or private customised sessions for companies

The Learning Factor is Asia Pacific’s leader in training outsourcing. For more than 15 years they have been working with Fortune 500 and ASX 100 companies throughout the region. The Learning Factor have won 5 global awards for providing high quality outsourcing services, innovative service offering, ability to provide services on a global basis, and their unique and proven approach to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Solutions.

Some years back, our Managing Director had a great idea – let’s start doing virtual training. Look I’m not against eLearning, for some people it is great, but it’s never inspired me much more than a glorified PowerPoint. My immediate reaction was, “OMG, if that’s anything like eLearning then it will be boring as.”

I tried to avoid the subject as long as I could, hoping that the idea would just fade away, but no such luck. The date and time were set in our diaries. There was no escaping now. I was committed to attending a one-hour virtual training session with some guru virtual trainer.

In spite of doing all I could to have an off-site appointment that morning, fate would have no one want to meet me for coffee. Finally the time had come. I had to bite the bullet and attend.

Look, let’s face it – I had been a trainer since I was in nappies. I can train face to face under water, with my hands tied behind my back. I can tell jokes, make people laugh, make them cry, bring seriousness, use voice inflections, wave my size 13 hands around like a conductor to still the masses. So when you try to tell me, “This is the next big thing! Virtual training is going to take the world by storm!” Ha, not likely.

I was depressed with the thought of going online to listen to some dumb virtual trainer for an hour. What could they teach me anyhow? My brain was working overtime and I had a thought, “Well if I have to be online, I will act like I’m there but really be on my other screen and be checking emails etc., they will never know.” (I have since found out that they do know when I am doing this)

Feeling a little more optimistic about the next hour I finally logged on. (Was I supposed to have tested my computer before now??). The session started with a screen I had never seen before and I felt awkward not knowing how to write, chat, type. My competitive juices started to flow a little and not wanting to appear as a complete virtual fool, I thought I better listen for a little while and learn.

Firstly the facilitator had us draw on a map what city we were in, then we had to type the temperature, next we chatting to each other, using the microphone to join a discussion. I hate to say it but I was starting to warm to this, some may think I was enjoying myself. I was chatting away, drawing, making animations – smiling, having coffee breaks, and raising my hand up and then putting it down. We watched a video, did a poll and I thought, “Im pretty good at all this.” Maybe I can crack a joke in the chat room – and then, just like that the 60 minutes had finished.

It was so engaging, entertaining, and interactive that two things happened to me: I actually learned a lot while having fun and I really connected with all the people including the facilitator and felt invigorated. Oh and one last thing happened – I saw the future of learning, it was virtual training. This is the next big thing! Virtual training is going to take the world by storm! How boring is virtual training? I didn’t have time to notice. 🙂